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In George Orwell’s prescient novel, 1984, the slogan of the Party is
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
The idea is both simple and profound. By eradicating and reinventing history, it is possible to completely reframe reality for future generations. This is routinely done by leftwing academics searching for penumbras and emanations of the US Constitution. //
Salon runs one of these epic falsehoods titled Sorry, NRA: The U.S. was actually founded on gun control. //
This is simply nutbaggery. Madison’s draft amendment is only intended to protect Quakers and Mennonites from being compelled to provide military service. It’s pretty simple.
Ed-squared also turn the logic of the Second Amendment upon its head. If the Founders had, indeed, harbored fear of an armed populace then they went to great lengths to hide it. Take a look at the militia laws extant in the colonies at the signing of the Constitution.
Connecticut required every male over sixteen to keep a musket, powder and shot.
Virginia declared that all free men were required to possess a musket, four pounds of lead and one pound of powder. If a free man was not financially able to afford a weapon, the county had to provide one.
New York dictated a fine of five shillings to any male, sixteen to sixty, who could not arm himself.
Similar statutes are in all colonies. The clear intent of these laws is not that they link firearms ownership to militia membership, rather they are aimed at people who don’t have firearms in order to ensure the colony has a militia. Think of these laws in the same way that you’s think of laws requiring kids to be immunized before they can go to school. The laws aren’t aimed at people who voluntarily immunize and the purpose isn’t to further public education. Rather mandatory immunizations are on the books as a way of coercing people who would not immunize voluntarily. //
A free and an independent people are a direct threat to the progressive experiment. The only way they will achieve that goal is to lie and lie relentlessly and shamelessly until they control the past. We can’t allow that to happen.
We have recently heard much about the Fourteenth Amendment with regard to “birthright citizenship.”. //
This language actually further limits and restricts what the federal government can do to us in the writing of its laws. This is where the “Equal Protection” really kicks in: “(N)or deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Proper application of the 14th Amendment? Means a whole lot of laws are unconstitutional.
Progressive tax law? Or any tax law other than a true flat tax? Is unconstitutional. To pass one law with multiple tax rates? Or tax law that has crony tax breaks to which only some citizens have access? Is denial of many millions of Americans’ “equal protection of the laws.”
Nigh everything the Feds do is predicated upon punishing enemies and rewarding friends. Laws for thee — but not for me. Or vice versa. None of this is constitutional — per the 14th.
Think of the massive disempowerment of the federal government the correct application of the 14th would provide.
Think of the massive equalization of opportunities the end of anti-14th cronyism would deliver. //
The Big Cronies’ government advantages mean greater success. Which means they can better afford even more cronyism. Which means even greater success. Which means…. Lather, rinse, repeat.…. //
Cronyism isn’t picking winners and losers. It’s picking losers at the expense of winners.
The losers end up looking like winners because they are being propped up and propelled forward by the cronyism. It’s government force-feeding us bad ideas. Which deprives us of better ideas. Because they are overrun by the lesser, cronyism-fueled bad ideas.
See: Fake energy. Solar and wind are terrible. But they look “viable” because of the hundreds of billions of dollars of Big Gov cronyism shoving them down our throats. //
See also: The bank sector. Which is as rife with cronyism as any sector in the US.
You know what happened to your disappeared neighborhood bank? That had been in your community for decades? Big Gov cronyism killed it.
The Big Banks dominate. They received tens of trillions of dollars in government money after they helped destroy the global economy in 2008. Not letting that serious crisis go to waste? Big Gov let the Big Banks write the Dodd-Frank law that further institutionalized their cronyism.
Thousands of neighborhood banks have been murdered as a result. Which the Big Banks then buy on the cheap. Which further solidifies their Bigness. Which….
Let's review the bidding. Biden creates a facially illegal and purely discretionary program. He brings in a half-million Third World illegals who are, according to the definition of the program, "inadmissible or otherwise ineligible for admission." President Trump, supported by the secretary of homeland security, orders an end to the program and jumps through the administrative hoops of using a Federal Register announcement to reverse Biden's purely discretionary program and a Deep State, or Deep State-adjacent federal judge says he can't and requires an individual interview to end the paroles, which is not required by law, when they never received the legally require individual parole.
This is not new. Barack Obama created the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program (DACA or Dreamers) out of whole cloth. It is simply a scheme whereby the federal government covers its eyes and pretends these people don't exist. This program was not created by executive order, law, or administrative rulemaking. Nope. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano issued a freakin memo directing that "prosecutorial discretion" be exercised. However, when Jeff Sessions got around to pulling the plug on DACA, lawfare ensued, and the administration was told it could not rescind the Napolitano memo.
Just stop for a moment and consider this. Federal courts literally told the Trump administration that they could not rescind a memo written five years and three Homeland Security secretaries earlier. Logically, this means a cabinet secretary’s memo is more powerful than an actual law because it takes no consensus to issue it, and it can’t be withdrawn when management changes. To make matters worse, the Roberts Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld the logically ridiculous notion that the whim of a Democrat president has the same standing, in terms of permanence, as the Constitution.
We clearly have a two-tiered justice system. Not only do BLM rioters get a pass while pro-life grannies go to jail for demonstrating peacefully outside an abortion center, the president himself has his decision treated with derision by the federal courts while all manner of Democrat humbug receives the adulation of our black-robed overseers. //
houdini1984
3 hours ago
The Supreme Court has become the problem. By refusing to keep the judicial branch in its own lane, the Roberts Court has greenlit a nationwide judicial coup against our elected representatives, including the President. The Founders never intended to create a nation that was subject to judicial tyranny of this kind.
The only solution is for the elected branches to push back decisively, soundly rejecting all judicial decisions that interfere with or run contrary to constitutionally-established congressional and presidential powers. Unfortunately, Democrats will block and congressional attempts to rein in these rogue judges, which means that it's up to executive to restore our constitutional order.
The President has taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. If that requires him to defend it against one of the other branches, so be it.
Dieter Schultz houdini1984
3 hours ago
The Supreme Court has become the problem. By refusing to keep the judicial branch in its own lane, the Roberts Court has greenlit a nationwide judicial coup against our elected representatives, including the President.
Oh, if it were only that simple.
IMHO, it is not just the SC that is the problem, all of the branches of the federal government are confused and conflicted. Congress sets up independent departments and functions in the executive branch and puts language in the law prohibiting the President from removing them. Then, the executive branch makes rules, and binding rulings, that look, and are, a lot like lawmaking and the judiciary, respectively.
Today the most pressing problem is the judiciary and it being out of control but the problem is bigger than that and requires something more than just the SC doing its job.
Although, right now I'd settle for the SCOTUS actually doing its job.
houdini1984 Dieter Schultz
2 hours ago
Admittedly, our entire constitutional order is out of whack, but we have to start somewhere if we want to get things back on track. The problem is that too many on the right are sitting around waiting and hoping for SCOTUS to do the right thing. That's not going to happen with Roberts at the helm, since he's more concerned with protecting the Court than safeguarding the country.
Meanwhile, Congress is completely broken. They can't even do their job and complete a budget. Every year, they wait until the last minute and push some stupid continuing resolution at us while threatening a shutdown. The Dems have been waging war against normalcy for decades, and the Republicans are too disunited to mount any effective opposition.
Sadly, it's up to the Executive to stand against this nonsense and try to restore sense and order to the nation. The only good news here is that this administration seems to understand that the administrative state needs to be rolled back, so maybe that will mute some of your concerns about executive rulings, rules, and pseudo-lawmaking.
Hope is a terrible strategy, but it appears to be all we have at this point. //
houdini1984 Scholar
30 minutes ago
Just so. If I were Trump, I would assemble some of my most plain-spoken cabinet members and organize an instructional speech to the nation. We would explain, in simple words, exactly how our government has become so off-track, and the steps needed to put things back in order. Explain how this current dysfunction directly affects their lives, and the benefits they'll enjoy from a restoration of constitutional governance.
Oh, and make a point to talk about the people who support the current misrule, and the corrupt benefits they enjoy from corrupting our constitutional system. Then challenge Democrats to join us in fixing these problems -- while making it clear that we won't allow their anti-American revolution to do any further damage to the American people. //
mopani houdini1984
9 minutes ago edited
What it is going to take is years of push back and work by the executive branch, including making regular updates to the people.
There is no easy solution, and any quick fix will be quickly broken.
Buckle up, any victory worth having is worth fighting for.
I thank God we have a chief executive who understands this and is willing to wage the war. But he has got to take it to the people when frequent special addresses and pressure Congress to make his executive orders into law.
The Supreme Court’s continuing failure to define lower courts’ authority is wreaking havoc on the reputation of the courts — and our constitutional order. //
The Supreme Court has interceded six times in less than three months to rein in federal judges who improperly exceeded their Article III authority and infringed on the Article II authority of President Donald Trump. Yet the high court continues to issue mealy-mouthed opinions which serve only to exacerbate the ongoing battle between the Executive and Judicial branches of government. And now there is a constitutional crisis primed to explode this week in a federal court in Maryland over the removal of an El Salvadoran — courtesy of the justices’ latest baby-splitting foray on Thursday. //
Yet, those requests, as the Trump Administration pointed out yesterday in its response brief, directly infringe on the president’s Article II authority. “The federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner,” the Trump Administration wrote. Rather, “[t]hat is the ‘exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.’”
While the Supreme Court has declared that “[s]uch power is ‘conclusive and preclusive,’ and beyond the reach of the federal courts’ equitable authority,” given her orders to date, Judge Xinis is unlikely to stand down. Rather, expect the Obama appointee to enter another scathing order demanding details and actions. But with its core executive powers at stake, the Trump Administration cannot comply.
The justices should have foreseen this standoff and defused the situation last week by clearly defining the limits of the lower court’s authority. The Supreme Court’s continuing failure to do so is wreaking havoc on the reputation of the courts — and our constitutional order.
Do you have a grievance with how the federal government is spending your tax money? A complaint over some wasteful practice or feather-bedded bureaucracy? I know I do - I could fill several volumes with complaints about government waste.
Well, now the Department of Government Efficiency - the DOGE - has an internet portal where you can take your complaint directly to them.
"Your voice in federal decision making," reads the website Regulations.gov, "Impacted by an existing rule or regulation? Share your ideas for deregulation by completing this form." https://www.regulations.gov/deregulation //
Dawgly One
4 hours ago
Somebody check me if I’m wrong, I didn’t look it up. Boil the 18 enumerated powers down to the following:
1). Protect our sovereign borders
2). Maintain armed forces
3). Maintain the currency (we don’t even do this, we leave it to the Fed, which is murky sorta government)
4). Run a post office
5). Maintain post roads (I translate this as the interstate hwy system)
6). Regulate interstate commerce.
That’s it, all of it. I figure we could cut Federal spending by about 60%. Everything else needs to handled at the state level.
Ward Clark Dawgly One
4 hours ago
Looks like a good list to me.
Like with the Japanese internment during World War II, the current move to deport alleged alien criminals is driven by hysteria.
This is a prime example of the press exposing its activist nature. When these select judges ruled on Trump’s activities, it was hyperactive coverage and banner headlines. Judge James Boasberg has become something of a media darling for imposing injunctions and TROs on deportation efforts. Yet when these cases rise to the Supreme Court and get reversed, you might see some pat reporting and solitary articles.
Logic would dictate that if these were in fact serious cases, the coverage would match on either side of a ruling. But as we have become conditioned to for some time, the press is largely dictated by emotion and partisanship. When these judges came out with rulings opposing Trump’s policies, it was blaring headlines, round-the-clock coverage, and every exploration made into how the president was defying the Constitution and burning down our democracy.
Now we get solitary news items and a calming of the waters. Primetime pundits are not delving into the prospect of rogue judges threatening our democracy by attempting to override the president. No “experts” are brought on camera to criticize courts trying to step in and wrest Executive Branch control from the Chief Executive. Outlets are not sharing op-eds about the meaning of it all concerning SCOTUS.
This is a clear sign of an activist media complex. The coverage of the initial judgements were not merely sober presentations of the facts; they were promoting an agenda and encouraging these actions by the judges. Once the rulings come in, then the media makes proclamations and charges Trump with “defying the courts” accusations and interpreting worst-case scenarios.
This is a major advance in the moves by the partisan press. This is not merely farming a narrative anymore; this is a blatant attempt to influence governance. There is a clear anti-administration agenda and they're not even attempting to hide it. They begin from the standpoint that Trump is wrong, regardless of the issue, and then strain to manipulate details to suit that accusation.
Look at one of the impotent arguments made about the use of the Alien Enemies Act when it was said to be invalid because it is an old law from the 1700s. Somehow, this was supposed to suggest that the AEA no longer counts. But for this logic to stand, then you have to question the legitimacy of the very Constitution itself, given that the document predates the law they do not like.
Media political commentator Jonathan Turley broached the subject on Wednesday, opining that a third term in office for Trump is "unlikely":
The late Justice Antonin Scalia famously said that Congress does not “hide elephants in mouseholes.” His point was that courts are skeptical of using minor provisions in a statute to achieve sweeping new legal changes.
The challenge of stuffing an elephant into a mousehole came to mind this week after President Donald Trump said that he is “not joking” about considering a third term and that experts told him it is possible under the Constitution.
One often has to take such moments with a heavy dose of skepticism from a president who clearly relished handing snake-in-a-can soundbites to the media just to watch the resulting screams. If so, he was not disappointed. The media went into renewed vapors as commentators pronounced, yet again, the death of democracy.
However, given the president’s statement, it is important to be clear about the basis for this theory, which has long been something of a parlor game for law professors on how a president might be able to circumvent the two-term limitation imposed by the 22nd Amendment. //
Translation: While some on our side relish Trump's role as a master troller, this is one area where trolling, if he is indeed doing so, could potentially hurt both the president and congressional Republicans who defend such talk.
It behooves the wise among us—including Trump, I hope—to understand that while he relishes playing to loyalists, his decisive president election win was made possible by untold numbers of Democrat crossover votes, including record numbers of Black and Hispanic voters, who may not have been huge fans, but voted as much against Harris-Walz as for Trump-Vance. //
etba_ss
an hour ago
There is only one way, legally. A new Constitutional Amendment. If they tried the back door, SCOTUS would rule 9-0 against it, as they should.
A ticket of Vamce-Trump would lose, as the focus would be on subverting the Constitution. The votes you'd lose on that issue would make it unwinnable. Why would Vance be interested in that?
Trump isn't serious. He's trolling. I think it's a foolish troll that offers no reward but risks him being viewed as the tyrant they claim he is by people who aren't crazy about him in the first place.
Some jokes aren't smart to make.
The Heritage Guide to the Constitution is intended to provide a brief and accurate explanation of each clause of the Constitution as envisioned by the Framers and as applied in contemporary law. Its particular aim is to provide lawmakers with a means to defend their role and to fulfill their responsibilities in our constitutional order.
The point of all the injunctions and restraining orders is to preserve the supreme rule of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. //
More nationwide injunctions and restraining orders have been issued against Trump in the past month that were issued against the Biden administration in four years. On Wednesday alone, four different federal judges ordered Elon Musk to reinstate USAID workers (something he and DOGE have no authority to do), ordered President Trump to disclose sensitive operational details about the deportation flights of alleged terrorists, ordered the Department of Defense to admit individuals suffering from gender dysphoria to the military, and ordered the Department of Education to issue $600 million in DEI grants to schools.
On one level, what all this amounts to is an attempted takeover of the Executive Branch by the Judicial Branch — a judicial coup d’état. These judges are usurping President Trump’s valid exercise of his Executive Branch powers through sheer judicial fiat — a raw assertion of power by one branch of the federal government against another.
Kennedy then asked the assistant AG nominee to "explain how this works."
You have a plaintiff and you have a defendant. And the plaintiff files a lawsuit and goes in front of a federal judge. a federal judge has a certain jurisdiction ... and subject matter over the parties; the plaintiff and the defendant. They're the only two people in court. How can a federal judge issue an order that affects everybody else — other than those in front of him or her? How's that possible?
Shumate was on it:
It shouldn't be possible, Senator. But district courts do it all the time. I think on the theory that the courts need to enjoin a federal policy from going into effect, and they also will enjoin it nationwide so all non-parties are protected by that injunction. //
John Kennedy @SenJohnKennedy
·
The universal injunction has become a weapon against the Trump admin.
It’s long past time to put an end to this lawless practice.
12:50 PM · Mar 26, 2025. //
anon-l1t0
15 minutes ago
I remember when Obama wanted to make changes in the law but could not get Congress to agree. He found a willing plaintiff to sue the government, and a friendly judge, and then entered into a Consent Decree to accomplish his desired outcome. Then if someone sane objected, Obama simply pointed to the court order and said that his hands were tied by the court. Lawfare working for rather than against the President and his agenda. That is how it is done.
The Supreme Court has become a paper tiger, failing to hold defiant lower courts accountable when they make rogue decisions. //
Lower court federal judges across the country are standing athwart the American people’s will to allow the Trump administration to cut government programs and deport violent gang members from the country. But these unelected judges have a long-running pattern of clinging to their status quo, even in defiance of the Supreme Court, because the high court refuses to rein them in.
The Supreme Court has the responsibility to make sure its subsidiary courts follow its directives — often by taking more cases, and making their precedent unambiguous. Arrogant, active, and open defiance on some of the most important issues, however, has been the norm from these lower courts for years, and a majority on the high court has persistently refused to stop them. //
The Court’s majority again refused to take a case wrongly decided by lower courts, when the Biden administration attempted to fine a Medicare-funded work-around for Dobbs, forcing hospitals in Idaho, which had outlawed almost all abortions, to perform them anyway.
“Shortly before Idaho’s law took effect, President Biden instructed members of his administration to find ways to limit Dobbs’s reach,” Alito wrote in a dissent for Moyle v. United States. “Apparently, the Court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents. That is regrettable.”
It’s not just abortion, it’s Second Amendment rights as well. Lower courts repeatedly waged war against DC v. Heller, the Supreme Court precedent that struck down a law that banned handgun ownership in Washington, D.C., and clarified that the Second Amendment does not just protect a right to self defense for militia purposes.
In a 2018 case that would have allowed the Court to enforce its own precedent, the Court ran away, and had done so for years, Thomas wrote in yet another dissent slamming lower courts for defying the high court.
“Our continued refusal to hear Second Amendment cases only enables this kind of defiance. We have not heard argument in a Second Amendment case for nearly eight years … If this case involved one of the Court’s more favored rights, I sincerely doubt we would have denied certiorari,” Thomas said before listing other rights that the Court would have taken cases on. “The Court would take these cases because abortion, speech, and the Fourth Amendment are three of its favored rights. The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court’s constitutional orphan. And the lower courts seem to have gotten the message.” //
The Court used to enforce its precedent, like when lower courts attempted to defy Brown v. Board of Education and its mandate to racially integrate schools. It used to do it because it has always been part of the job — precedential decisions are not ‘one-and-done’ adventures. They will need clarification, parameters set, or clarity for lower courts to tell them the high court meant what it said.
At least one federal judge, James C. Ho of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, has publicly diagnosed at least part of the problem with the court refusing to take cases: A debilitating lack of fortitude among a vast array of federal judges.
In a 2023 speech at the Heritage Foundation, Ho said many federal judges are afraid to make tough decisions, or take tough cases, because they are afraid of public backlash for making the right decision:
If you plan to be faithful to the Constitution in every case, no matter how unpopular that may be, gold stars are not in the cards for you. But that’s the job. Judges don’t swear an oath to uphold the Constitution part of the time: We swear an oath to uphold the Constitution all of the time.
If you’re an originalist only when elites won’t be upset with you—if you’re an originalist only when it’s easy — that’s not principled judging. That’s fair-weather originalism. We’re not binding ourselves to the text if we only follow it when people like the result.
“When you look at the résumé of a typical federal judge, you often see a bunch of fancy credentials,” Ho added to the argument in a 2024 piece for the National Review. “People who have devoted their whole lives to collecting gold stars tend to be motivated by one overarching objective: getting more gold stars. If that’s what drives you, then the threat of public scolding can be a powerful motivator.”
The “booing of the crowd,” Ho said, “is not going away anytime soon,” and if judges cannot handle it, they should probably find other work.
At what point does judicial review turn into judicial rule?
This problem isn’t just about these issues or executive power — it’s about the broader politicization of the judiciary. When a judge blocks a policy because he personally opposes it, rather than because it violates the Constitution, he is no longer functioning as a neutral arbiter. //
Even the Supreme Court has recognized the dangers of this judicial overreach. In Trump v. Hawaii (2018), Chief Justice John Roberts warned lower courts that they do not have the authority to micromanage national security decisions made by the executive. Yet lower courts continue to ignore that warning, issuing nationwide injunctions based on political discomfort rather than constitutional law.
The media will cast Trump’s decision to ignore Boasberg’s ruling as reckless, lawless, or authoritarian. But what’s truly reckless is allowing the judiciary to continue seizing power it does not have. There is precedent for presidents pushing back against judicial overreach. Abraham Lincoln ignored a Supreme Court ruling in 1861 when Chief Justice Roger Taney attempted to block his suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. Andrew Jackson famously refused to comply with a Supreme Court decision in Worcester v. Georgia, arguing that the executive branch — not the judiciary — was responsible for enforcement. Both of those decisions were controversial. Both were necessary.
The ACLU is seeking to stop the executive branch from removing five plaintiffs. D.C. District Judge James Boasberg hastily took command and control over the latest iteration of lawfare, emergently agreeing to consider the case and issuing orders camouflaged in legitimacy. Judge Boasberg’s orders, actions, and reactions are laden with plain error.
From the onset, Boasberg failed to recognize his court lacks the jurisdiction to hear this case. Why? The ACLU filed this case in the District of Columbia. The five Venezuelan plaintiffs represented by the ACLU are not detained in D.C., but in New York and Texas. The Supreme Court ruled in Rumsfeld v. Padilla that no court has jurisdiction over a habeas petition unless those filing the petition are detained in the district in which it was filed.
Boasberg was also quick to accept the plaintiffs’ premise that the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) is a power properly exercised only during a time of war. This is patently false. Any plain reading of the law makes it clear that the AEA is an appropriate power to invoke not only during a time of war, but when the president determines there has been an invasion or predatory incursion. Even more persuasive is the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ludecke v. Watkins that the AEA extends beyond wartime. And without a statutory definition of “invasion” or “predatory incursion,” it is the judgment of the president alone to determine if such has occurred. This national security determination is a non-justiciable political question and the Supreme Court has repeatedly informed the intellectually curious that political questions are not reviewable by a court. //
Boasberg has gone too far and too fast to retreat, so this skirmish will continue until the Supreme Court loads up the Article II canons on his position (see what I did there). Through his orders and admonitions, Boasberg has tactlessly given imprimatur to the “legal strategy” of disrupting the Trump presidency at all costs. Boasberg has called DOJ’s response to brash authority as “woefully insufficient,” but, candidly, his stewardship of this case thus far has been nothing more than woeful.
President Trump’s adversaries were determined to take his freedom, his fortune, and even his life. Those efforts thankfully failed. But his enemies remain undeterred.
This is just lawfare by other means.
The solution is clear: either the Supreme Court needs to step in and reassert its unique authority to issue nationwide rulings, or Congress must pass legislation limiting district courts' ability to issue sweeping national injunctions. The current system, where any district judge can effectively veto presidential actions, is unsustainable and undermines our constitutional order.
Trump's administration continues to fight these battles in court, often successfully on appeal. But the time has come to address this abuse of judicial power head-on.
Random US Citizen
3 hours ago edited
He’s not “going to lose” the narrative, he’s already lost it. He lost it back when he manipulated the outcome of the Obamacare case by ignoring the plain wording of the statute and decided the the word “penalty”—those seven literal letters—meant “tax.” Everything he’s done after that has just proved that he is a politician, not a judge. The damage he has done to the reputation of the judiciary through his blatant political maneuvering is incalculable. It’s rather ironic that insiders claim he is doing this to protect the court from a reputation for being political. But the Supreme Court has gone from one of the most trusted institutions in the country to one that is at a historic low of trust.
John Roberts has no one to blame for this but himself. His constant refusal to decide constitutional matters before the court in favor of remanding them over minor issues is part of the problem. His willingness to join the conservatives on the bench in important decisions merely so he can write tepid opinions is another. His need to make choices based on political calculations is a third. But most damaging is his unwillingness to admit the reality that lower court judges are making decisions based on their personal politics and take action. His claim that “There are no ‘Obama judges’” in the face of this reality was proof that he’s not serious about his job as a justice.
Either that, or someone is holding his kids hostage.
jester6 Random US Citizen
8 minutes ago
As I wrote in another thread, SCOTUS's power to declare actions of the Executive and Legislative branches unconstitutional is not found in the text of the Constitution. That power comes from a 1803 court decision called Marbury vs Madison. SCOTUS granted themselves that power, and the other branches aqueised.
However, for most of our history, it was only SCOTUS who challenged the Executive or Legislative branch openly. Over the last 40 years the Circuits began to do it. And now, since 2016, the District courts are playing at the game. These judges are operating on the idea that power of the judiciary iis sacrosanct; infact the judiciary is the weakest branch if government in our system. It has no real power over the other branches if they decide to ignore it.
Thanks to the actions of these district judges, the entire judiciary is now part of our political process. Sooner or later, the traditional political branches are going to start treating the judiciary as political players. The judiciary has very little power to withstand that onslaught.
Not only can Trump simply ignore the judiciary, Congress can wipe out all courts but SCOTUS with a simple majority vote, and there is nothing the judiciary can do. Congress can also simply remove jurisdiction on certain matters from the courts with a majority vote.
If Trump decided to ignore the courts tomorrow, their only hope would be for Congress to impeach Trump... and the judiciary has made enemies of so many people in Congress, there is zero chance the Senate would vote two-thirds to remove Trump from office. The bottom line is Roberts has let these district judges put the entire judiciary into a precarious position.
These judges are like a 50 year old man reffing a football game who decides he wants to play running back... they've picked up the ball but they have not considered what it will feel like when a 300 pound 25 year old linebacker takes them down. They are foolishly assuming the protections that went with their role as ref will continue when they play the game. If they don't reverse course, they will find out that is a bad assumption. //
1776-2023RIP
3 hours ago
It is Roberts job to rein in these out of control judges.
Like everything else, he’s failing at this. He pontificates that “for over 200 years…blah, blah”.
But he doesn’t acknowledge that no president has ever faced this level of litigation. This is Judicial tyranny. Nothing less.
The Judicial Branch ( headed by the Supreme Court ) is a coequal ( not superior) branch of government.
The Executive Branch ( The President) is a coequal ( not inferior) branch of government.
Sometimes they are in conflict. It would then be up to the other Co-equal branch ( the Legislature) to resolve the conflict. That is our system under the constitution.
Reminder the Supreme Court has gotten many, many things wrong over the years. The “Dred Scott decision “ being a notable one. Abraham Lincoln famously ignored this ruling. He was right to do so.
Just because a court ( even the SC) says it so, doesn’t mean it has to be so. Otherwise, a rogue supreme court could simply rule that every action a president took is unconstitutional. Effectively neutering the President, and arrogating Executive Powers to themselves. This is judicial tyranny and Justice Roberts should put an end to it. Before Trump does. //
Mike Rogers
2 hours ago edited
Roberts gets ONE chance. Either the court takes one of these challenges to article 2 and rules in favor of the constitution or Trump can remind the nation that the judiciary cannot control the presidency and plow on with the people’s agenda.
There is a big difference between contract law and the (unfortunately) painful procedures for firing civil servants, and ruling on policy which is outside the purview of ANY judge.
During Trump 1.0 Roberts was concerned about maintaining the legitimacy and relevance of the Supreme Court, but Trump 2.0 can destroy both if he does not guide the court to adhere closely to the constitution. //
anon-jzmf
3 hours ago
Justice Roberts wants courts and judges to be seen as neutral arbiters sitting on a serene plane high above the excesses of politics. But John, if you want your fantasy to come true, your courts and judges have to actually sit above politics, and many judges do not. If a significant number of judges decide to become activists, making their venues "political courts," then the political branches will inevitably respond to the politicization of those courts. Get ready, Johnny, because it's coming and coming hard. //
Jeff Bartlett
2 hours ago
You miss the point. Trump is whining about impossible impeachments when he should be doing this:
- Sue EOs in pro-Trump courts: Trump wins, uses as cover to proceed while
rulings conflict. - Use Lincoln precedent: remove judges for violating Article 3, Section 1, Clause 1.
- Charge judges with treason: acting w/o jurisdiction (US v Will, Cohens v Virginia). //
A federal judge has no power to usurp Executive Branch authority or dictate foreign policy to the president. //
In response, Boasberg called a hearing on Monday demanding to know exactly what time those planes took off, when they left U.S. airspace, and when they touched down in El Salvador — again, as if he, a lone federal judge, has authority to direct counter-terrorism operations that fall under the exclusive authority of the Executive Branch. The administration said simply that these were operational questions that it was not at liberty to discuss in a public setting. (In a jaw-dropping display of arrogance, Boasberg shot back that that his judicial powers “do not lapse at the airspace’s edge.”)
Just prior to that hearing, Attorney General Pam Bondi laid out the administration’s view of the larger question of whether the federal courts even have the power to intervene in this case. In a response and motion to vacate, Bondi argued that the plaintiffs in this case “cannot use these proceedings to interfere with the President’s national-security and foreign-affairs authority, and the Court lacks jurisdiction to do so.”
Bondi went on to explain that “just as a court assuredly could not enjoin the President from carrying out a foreign drone strike or an overseas military operation, or from negotiating with a foreign power to coordinate on such an operation, nor could a court lawfully restrict the President’s inherent Article II authority to work with a foreign nation to transfer terrorists and criminals who are already outside the United States.” The president’s invocation of the AEA, in other words, is non-justiciable and unreviewable.
What the administration is expressing here is a view of judicial and executive powers that more closely conforms to how the Founding Fathers understood them. Put simply, the Founders didn’t think the judiciary was the sole arbiter of what is and is not constitutional. While the courts, headed by the Supreme Court, indeed have an independent power to interpret and apply the Constitution, that doesn’t mean they are supreme over the other two branches, or the states for that matter. //
James Madison stated plainly the reasoning behind this more expansive view of separation of powers clearly in Federalist No. 49: “The several departments being perfectly co-ordinate by the terms of their common commission, neither of them, it is evident, can pretend to an exclusive or superior right of settling the boundaries between their respective powers.”
That means the judiciary can’t simply dictate to the Congress or the president what they must or must not do according to the Constitution. As legal scholar Michael Paulsen has written, “the power of constitutional interpretation is a divided, shared power incident to the functions of each of the branches of the national government — and to instruments of state governments, and of juries, as well — with none of these actors literally bound by the views of any of the others.” According to this view, the Constitution itself, not the Supreme Court, is the supreme law of the land.
If that sounds like a radical view of the Constitution and the separation of powers, that’s only because we have strayed so far from how our constitutional system was first established, and have imported the alien concept of judicial supremacy that elevates the role of the courts over and above the political branches and the states.
It wasn’t always this way. Abraham Lincoln, for example, understood that the Executive Branch was not necessarily bound by the rulings issued by the Supreme Court but had its own inherent power to interpret the Constitution. Lincoln and the Congress both famously asserted what we might call constitutional supremacy in their defiance of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, by enacting and enforcing laws prohibiting slavery in federal territories — something Dred Scott expressly forbade. Lincoln also defied a Supreme Court decision purporting to limit his authority as commander-in-chief to hold enemy prisoners during the Civil War.
CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS on Trump world's calls to impeach James Boasberg, who ruled against the president on the Alien Enemy Act:
"For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.
"The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.". //
Musicman
2 hours ago
Roberts is the reason we are having this controversy. For years now, under Trump's first and now second term, District judges have been issuing orders that extend beyond their districts. Roberts has had numerous opportunities to reign in those judges and has failed to do so. Yes, there is an appellate process, but SCOTUS should make it clear that only the SUPREME COURT is a co-equal branch of government. Congress is a co-equal branch, but Congressmen are not. If a district court judge rules against a Presidential action, it should be stopped from enforcing that ruling until SCOTUS confirms that ruling (which it can do by refusing to hear the case) or overturns it. But Roberts cannot simply stand by and allow District Court after District Court to run the Executive Branch.
laker 7w7o7r7d7s
2 hours ago
Article 3 created ONLY the supreme court. everything else was put into place by Congress & the President.
Kids have figured out that America’s failing liberal institutions have left them surrounded by a harmful cultural and political order that can’t justify itself. //
But in the clip from the debate that was most widely shared, a young Hispanic guy asks Seder about his objections to supposed religious fundamentalists and then, as the kids say, he proceeds to absolutely own Seder. Essentially, the question put before Seder is this: If he objects to traditional religious values as a foundation for guiding America’s collective political and legal decisions, what does he think should be the basis for morality? //
Presumably, Seder knew this debate would be hostile, but he seems genuinely shocked a kid would cut right to matters of first principles and question the assumptions of moral authority underpinning bog standard boomer liberalism. But this shouldn’t have been entirely unexpected. When it comes to political punditry, there’s a pretty basic test for whether or not you take someone seriously: How does that person justify the use of political power to implement the policies they favor?
What Seder was asked was far from a trick question; rather, it’s basic American civics. This is exactly the question that the Declaration of Independence addresses, as the founders knew that any attempt to legitimize the rejection of their present government would start with establishing why the government they were proposing was more just and morally superior. In that sense, it wasn’t just a declaration — it’s an explanation of the basis of morality, and how England’s governance was illegitimate for not respecting it. So our founding document is a fairly succinct and compelling natural law argument for a government that recognizes all men are created equal and endowed by our creator with inalienable rights that cannot be abrogated, let alone by a king who claims the “divine right” to tax people on a whim.
Of course, the actual structure of American governance is more complicated than that because we have to define and apply those rights, and the most just way to do that involves consent of the governed. So our system hinges on allowing an element of democracy, while putting enough checks in the system to ensure the tyranny of the majority doesn’t overwhelm the God-given rights of individuals. We don’t always get the balance right, but that’s the basic idea. And there’s no getting around the fact that having objective notions of morality, traditionally represented by a belief in God, is foundational to our whole system. You may not like the structure of American governance, but you’d think a guy who’s been doing liberal talk radio and podcasts for over twenty years would recognize why the question he was asked was so important and have a coherent way to answer it.
As Chris Rufo observes, “The remarkable thing here is that the Left’s ‘debate champ’ doesn’t see the entire setup, which means he’s ignorant of basic Christian theology, the natural rights theory of the American founders, and the criticism from Nietzsche to Weber to Foucault. Just doesn’t know any of it.” There’s also an element of blatant hypocrisy here as well. “Seder objects to religion because it ‘imposes’ values on everyone,” notes professor and First Things editor Mark Bauerlein. “It is, however, a dream to think that imposition of values is NOT a precondition of every social order. (Foucault’s prime critique of liberalism is that it presumes such.)” //
In other words, it’s safe to assume Seder is defending the dominant liberal order imposing its values on everyone because it’s what he knows and what he prefers, not because he can articulate why it’s justifiably “moral.” Nor is our current liberal order necessarily a matter of consent or democracy. This is pretty evident in the left’s approach to social issues. Gay marriage flailed in nearly every referendum it faced, and only became legal after the Supreme Court made it legal by decree, using a decision that has all the defensible legal and moral rubric one would expect to find on the back of a cereal box. And when a more conservative Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the left screamed in unison they actually preferred it when nine unelected judges conjured up a new right to murder children in the womb that half the country found morally abhorrent, rather than letting such a controversial issue be decided by be democratic means.
And when liberals couldn’t exercise raw power to get their way in courtrooms and legislative chambers, they leveraged the economic might of corporate America to enforce their agenda. Despite the fact BLM was a scam literally run by communists who explicitly stated the nuclear family was an obstacle to “social justice,” corporations were alternately bullied and praised into giving BLM and related causes $83 billion even as the movement burned cities to the ground.
The problem is that you can only arbitrarily impose values on people from the top down for so long before there’s political and cultural backlash.
This sequence of events tees up a court fight that challenges the ability of the Trump administration to use the Alien Enemies Act to rid the US of known members of terrorist groups.
The deportation of TdA members is one of at least three sets of court cases that, in my opinion, put the US on the cusp of a constitutional crisis due to activist and anti-Trump judges using an imagined ability to impose nationwide orders stopping the administration from acting. So far, a judge has ordered probationary employees rehired, another has ordered the government to spend money according to his rather than the administration's timetable, and now this judge has decided that illegal aliens who are members of a terrorist group can stay in the US; //
Spartan Conservative
an hour ago
I believe this is the key sentence to this post:
While the J6 defendants had to beg for help or rely on public defenders who may not have had much sympathy for them, somehow, the airborne terrorists, like Hamas provocateur Mahmoud Khalil, were able to come up with high-powered and very expensive legal help on very short notice to keep them from being speedily deported.
Like Orwell said, "some of us are more equal than others." Follow the money path going into those lawyers' pockets.